Global TALES feasibility study: Personal narratives in 10-year-old children around the world

Personal narratives make up more than half of children’s conversations. The ability to share personal narratives helps build and maintain friendships, promotes physical and emotional wellbeing, supports classroom participation, and underpins academic success and vocational outcomes. Although personal narratives are a universal discourse genre, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research into children’s ability to share personal narratives is in its infancy. The current study addresses this gap in the research by developing the Global TALES protocol, a protocol comprising six scripted prompts for eliciting personal narratives in school-age children (excited, worried, annoyed, proud, problem situation, something important). We evaluated its feasibility with 249 ten-year-old children from 10 different countries, speaking 8 different languages, and analyzed researchers’ views on the process of adapting the protocol for use in their own country/language. At group-level, the protocol elicited discourse samples from all children, although individual variability was evident, with most children providing responses to all six prompts. When investigating the topics of children’s personal narratives in response to the prompts, we found that children from around the world share many commonalities regarding topics of conversation. Once again individual variability was high, indicating the protocol is effective in prompting children to share their past personal experiences without forcing them to focus on one particular topic. Feedback from the participating researchers on the use of the protocol in their own countries was generally positive, although several translation issues were noted. Based on our results, we now invite clinical researchers from around the world to join us in conducting further research into this important area of practice to obtain a better understanding of the development of personal narratives from children across different languages and cultures and to begin to establish local benchmarks of performance.

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Additional data availability information: that 3-year-olds tended to produce two-event narratives; 4-year-olds produced more than two 98 events but their events were often out of sequence; 5-year-olds were able to relate past events 99 in a logical order and conveyed the meaning of the event (i.e. included an evaluation) without 100 a resolution; by the age of 6, children produced what they called a 'classic' narrative, 101 containing at least two past events, a high point (evaluation), and a resolution. Reese, Haden 102 (11) investigated personal narrative coherence across a wider age-range, from pre-school into 103 adulthood, focusing on three dimensions: context (orientation to time and place), chronology 104 (the order of actions included), and theme (the meaning-making aspect of the narrative). 105 Three-to-five-year-old children produced narratives that were on topic, but they often left out 106 contextual information, and chronology was poor. School-age children provided some 107 contextual information, and performance on chronology improved. Chronology continued to 108 improve from young to mid-adolescence, and by the time young people reached mid-109 adolescence they provided more specific contextual information. Finally, most of the young 110 adolescents' personal narratives were on topic and elaborated, but did not always include a 111 resolution or link to other autobiographical experiences. Children tend to produce personal narratives that reflect not only the cultural style of 115 their community (see 12, for a summary), but also the sociocultural norms (13). Children 116 generally start sharing personal experiences from 2 years of age, often in conversation with 117 their parents. Parents scaffold these narrative interactions, providing the child with a basic 118 overall structure. As predicted by Vygotsky's (14) sociocultural theory, this will become the 119 prominent model used by the child when creating personal narratives, which means that 120 children's personal narratives are likely influenced by their parents' narrative styles, values, 121 and beliefs. Some parents use an elaborative or topic-extending style in which they embellish 122 previously introduced topics, lengthening the conversation. Others use a repetitive style in 123 which they ask questions repeatedly, or a topic-switching style in which they introduce new 124 topics frequently. Parents using either of these latter two styles may have shorter 125 conversations about each event and provide less narrative structure. Some parents appear to 126 invite their children's input more than others, and some appear to expect short factual reports 127 as opposed to elaborate narratives (see 12). Cultural variations in how mothers support their 128 child's narrative have also been reported. Choi (1992, cited in 15) found that Korean mothers 129 were unlikely to encourage their children to introduce their own topics or contribute 130 information, whereas Canadian mothers were more likely to encourage narrative co-creation. 131 Similar variations have been found between Japanese and European American mothers and 132 their children, with Japanese mothers providing fewer evaluative comments in response to 133 their children's narratives and requesting less detail than the European American mothers 134 (16). 135 Children from some cultures (e.g., African American) may produce topic-associating 136 as opposed to topic-centred personal narratives, in which children include several experiences 137 into their personal narrative, as opposed to a detailed description of one experience (12). When developing a personal narrative protocol for use across cultures and languages, 188 the most important consideration is to avoid cultural and linguistic bias. We were concerned 189 that adopting the conversational map procedure (2), which begins with the examiner 190 providing a brief description of an event (e.g., hospital visit) as a model 'story,' could overly 191 influence the child's response. Furthermore, it may be difficult to select events that are 192 applicable across cultures, as not all children may identify with car accidents or ant-bites. 193 Although photos have been used successfully in Australia / New Zealand (25), the scenes 194 (e.g., beach photo, theme park, holidays), would not be appropriate for use with children who 195 live away from coastal waters or never go on school trips / holidays. More appropriate 196 prompts may include open-ended emotion cues (4) or social problem-solving prompts (23) 197 for eliciting narratives about meaningful events, regardless of culture. For the current project Inclusion criteria for the children were: a) aged between 9 years, 6 months and 10 years, 11 282 months, b) no history of speech and language difficulties, and c) currently not receiving 283 specialist services (such as speech-language therapy). To control for possible socio-economic 284 differences, we aimed to recruit children who attended schools considered to be located in a 285 middle-income area. To confirm children met these inclusion criteria, parents were asked to 286 complete a brief demographic questionnaire (see https://osf.io/ztqg6/ for a complete copy of 287 the project protocol). Table 1 provides an overview of the participant details, including the 288 child's country, chronological age, income area of the child's school (low, middle, high), 289 parents' highest levels of education, and family's income relative to the average income in 290 their country. As shown in Table 1   10;5 (0;4) 10;0 -10;9 10;1 (0;4) 9;6 -10;5 10;3 (0;7) 9;8 -11;9 10;4 (0;4) 10;0 -10;11 10;1 (0;8) 8;9 -11;0 10;5 (0;5) 10;0 -10;11 10:4 (0;4) 10;0 -10;10 10:4 (0;4) 9;8 -10;11 10;3 (0;3) 10;0 -10;11 10;3 (0;5) 9;9 -10;11 2%) 10 (37%) 6 (31.6%) 6 (30%) 3 (15%) 2 (10%) 9 (45%) 6 (30%) 4 (20%) 4 (18%) Trade qual 2 (5%) 0 3 (11%) 2 (10.5%) 4 (30%) 6 (30%) 0 0 2 (10%) 2 (9%) Bachelor 18 (45%) 10 (47.6%) 2 (7%) 5 (26.3%) 9 (45%) 12 (60%) 7 (35%) 9 (45%) 14 (70%) 8 (40%) 6 (27%) Post-graduate 14 (35%) 0 11 (41%) 6 (31.6%) 0 5 (25%) 5 (25%) 2 (10%) 0 6 (30%) 6 (27%) NR 0 1 (4.8%) Translation. The protocol was translated, when required, for use in non-English 319 speaking countries by one of the researchers who was a native speaker of that language. 320 When translating the protocol, the researcher sought to ensure that the child would be given   Children's performance by protocol prompt 415 Next, we investigated if some protocol prompts were more successful than others in 416 eliciting responses, as measured by the number of utterances/words. As shown in the S1 417 Table,  follow-up prompts were used in Cyprus across the six protocol prompts (see Table 4 and S4  were only non-codable due to examiner error). There were 18 responses to protocol prompts 443 (possible total 160 per country) across two countries (BR and RU) that were non-codable. 444 The total number of non-codable responses by protocol prompt ranged between 6 (Protocol 445 Prompt 1) and 15 (Protocol Prompts 5 and 6).   Given that English was not the first language of many participants, key questions 524 were sent to participants prior to the interviews. NT, a qualified speech and language 525 therapist and graduate student researcher from NZ, collected the data using a semi-structured 526 interview format using the online platform Zoom. "In semi-structured interviews the 527 researcher will have an interview guide but will be [more] flexible in encouraging the 528 participant to talk openly and will explore or probe issues that the participants raise" (37). 529 Interviews were conducted in English, and group interviews were held where there was more

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Prior experience and quality control. Participants from nine countries reported that they 681 transcribed the transcripts manually and three reported that it was a time-consuming process. 682 There was a range of experience among the participants. Although some participants reported 683 that they had experience with different types of narrative analysis prior to their involvement  and whether children were more likely to produce responses to some protocol prompts more 830 than others, based on number of utterances produced per story and number of scripted follow-831 up prompts provided by the data gatherers. We also investigated the topics of children's 832 personal narratives by coding topics into categories for each of the six prompts and 833 identifying topics that were used most frequently per country / language group. In Part II of 834 the study, qualitative analysis techniques were used to look for patterns in interview data that 835 were obtained from researchers participating in the project, based on their experience in using 836 the Global TALES protocol. were remarkably similar across protocol prompts, with all countries combined (see Table 3 to the six protocol prompts. As supported by the results for topic frequency in Table 5 norms with their children, compared to European/American mother-child dyads who tended 895 to focus on thoughts and feelings. We also observed that the use of the scripted follow-up 896 prompts could influence the child's narrative topic choice by providing a more specific topic 897 (see S2 Appendix) and that the timing of sampling relative to emotionally toned events, such 898 as a global pandemic, could influence topic choices. This phenomenon was observed when 899 sampling had to be suspended due to the pandemic and data collection begun again too late 900 for the data to be included in the current analyses (Ireland). Taken together, we found that 901 children from around the world share many commonalities regarding topics of conversation.